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Industry & Manufacturing

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

Aaron D. Crane (1804-1860) of Caldwell, New Jersey, was a clockmaker of brilliant inventiveness who worked outside the mainstream. Most of his contemporaries concentrated their energies on the mass production of technically unremarkable clocks. Crane was a versatile inventor whose best-known work, the torsion pendulum clock (patented in 1841), was startlingly original. This clock employed a torsion pendulum, slowly revolving about the vertical axis in alternating directions, and incorporated a new escapement of Crane's own design. It worked with such freedom of friction that it was capable of running for extremely long periods. Crane advertised his clocks as "month clocks," "twelve-month clocks," and "376-day clocks." He liked to refer to himself as the "One Year Clockmaker."

He installed most of his torsion pendulum clocks in unpretentious, rectangular cases, but in the last decade of his life he built a few clocks based on the ornate design of this one. Five survive.

In addition to telling time, this clock has a dial marked "astronomical" that indicates the day of the year, the position of the sun in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, the length of day and night, and the time of the tides.

Besides his clocks, Crane tried to market a variety of inventions through a number of businesses in Newark, New York City, and Boston. For all his mechanical ingenuity, he had little commercial success.

Some twenty years after his death, the torsion pendulum clock was reinvented independently in Germany and marketed as a "400-day clock" or "anniversary clock."

This is a set of three Bakelite billiard balls, in its original wooden box. The balls were made by the Hyatt-Burroughs Billiard Ball Co. of Newark, N.J. The date of manufacture is unknown. The label on the box states that "Bakelite Billiard balls are of the same resilience as the best ivory balls. 2-3/8 inch balls weigh exactly seven ounces, are of exact diameter, are perfectly and permanently round and balanced, unaffected by climactic conditions, and are practically indestructible."

During the 1970s, energy crises lamp makers scrambled to develop products that would be more energy efficient. One manufacturer, Duro-Test, began working with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an improved version of the ordinary incandescent lamp. The resulting product was called the "MI-T-Wattsaver" and was produced by the company from 1981 through 1989.

The basic concept seemed simple. The hotter a tungsten filament operates, the more efficient it becomes. Most of the energy emitted by the filament is in the form of invisible infrared rays that we feel as heat. If some of that heat could be directed back at the filament to raise its temperature, the lamp would give more light with no additional electricity needed. The researchers at Duro-Test and MIT called this concept a heat-mirror. They developed a special coating that would allow visible light to pass while reflecting infrared back to the filament, and put the coating on the inside of the glass bulb.

The concept worked but problems emerged. Tests showed that the coating aged with use, reducing the amount of heat reflected to the filament. The lamp was also difficult to make since the coating needed to be precisely applied and the filament needed to be mounted exactly in the center of the round bulb. As the price of compact fluorescent lamps fell in the late 1980s, Duro-Test decided to discontinue the MI-T-Wattsaver. The heat-mirror concept continues in use today in some tungsten-halogen lamps though.

The lamp seen here is a prototype sent to the U.S. Department of Energy for testing and evaluation in 1981.

Lamp characteristics: The piece has two sections-the lamp itself and a base adapter. The lamp has a brass bi-pin base (1/2" pin spacing with exhaust tube in between). Tungsten filament (broken) in CC-8 configuration with crimp connectors. A metal disc inside bottom of envelope may serve as a heat shield (the base pins pass through this disc). Tipless, G-24 glass envelope made in two halves. Both halves have an interior coating of infrared-reflecting film. The base adapter has a brass medium-screw shell, the insulator is part of a three-piece plastic skirt. Twist-lock receptacle on top connects to lamp.

Celluloid button with photographic image of "The Misses Volk," two young women posed cheek to cheek. On the back a paper insert reads "Sweet Caporal Cigarette," and may be an advertisment for that company.

Die-cut from celluloid sheet stock. The bookmark is decorated with an image of a woman reading next to a lamp. A verse about the virtues of a Welsbach light is printed on the front. A 1901 calendar is printed on the back.

Bookmark die-cut from a sheet of celluloid in the shape of a sprightly older man in spats and a straw hat, labeled "Foxy Grandpa Book Mark 2nd Year of the Musical Comedy." Foxy Grandpa was a comic strip created by Charles Edward "Bunny" Schultze that first appeared in January 1900. It featured a lively grandfather who was constantly one-upping his two grandsons' attempts at pranks and practical jokes.

The strip was incredibly popular, eventually printed as anthologies, becoming a Broadway hit and finally a series of live-action silent movies.

This pair of iron gates from the 1870s hung in the Dobson textile mill in Philadelphia, Penn., until 1991.

In the late 18th century most workers were farmers or artisans, accustomed to overseeing their own work and schedules, and setting the pace of their work by the seasons and centuries-old traditions. With the rise of the factory system of production in the 19th century, managers sought to mold workers into disciplined and coordinated armies of employees. They tried to regulate each laborer's schedule, pace, and work habits. They prohibited amusements, reading, games, and consumption of alcohol—diversions that had been permitted in the flexible work schedule of artisans' shops.

Fences around factories protected property and symbolically established who was in control. A fence forced workers to file through a gate past a timekeeper's office. Americans who worked in textile mills were among the first to experience the new relationship between managers and workers. Not everyone adapted to the new rules. Some workers found ways to continue to control their own work, formed unions to enforce their own work rules, or quit.

This model was submitted to the U.S. Patent Office with the application for the patent issued to John A. Roebling, of Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, July 16, 1842, no. 2728.

The model represents a section of a steam-boiler flue and head to which is attached the safety gauge. The gauge consists of a box fastened to the top of the flue and containing a fusible metal upon which rests a weight connected through a lever to a valve in the boiler head. Should the level of water within the boiler fall below the top of the flue, the fusible metal would melt and allow the weight to fall and open the valve, attracting the attention of the engineer. A rod is provided by which the lever and weight are raised by the engineer before admitting more water, so that the fused metal will solidify below the weight and the gauge will be in a position to function again.

Reference:

This description comes from the 1939 Catalog of the Mechanical Collections of the Division of Engineering United States Museum Bulletin 173 by Frank A. Taylor.